CD Review: The Hold Steady, "Boys and Girls in America"

In “On the Road,” Jack Kerouac wrote “Boys and girls in America have
such a sad time together.” But, as we learn from the latest album from
The Hold Steady, these sad times can make for great listening.

More than the title of the album, “Boys and Girls in
America,” seems to have been borrowed from Kerouac. The songs are
filled with stories from the fringes of society, told in an organized
stream-of-conscious manner, with each word vital to the narrative as a
whole.

The quick pace of the songs and the energetic guitar riffs
would be appropriate at the next on-campus party but do not camouflage
the serious tone of the lyrics, which would not seem out of place in
the newest piece of teen-angst literature, if such literature were more
literate.

The first song on the record, “Stuck Between Stations,” sets
the tone. Big, direct, happy guitars buoy frontman Craig Finn’s tale of
kids in Minnesota having sex, taking drugs, and getting dehydrated,
making the night feel “stuck between stations / on the radio.”

But that’s not to say all the songs here are rockers; the
requisite ballads are here too. Finn takes advantage of the slower
tempos to use some heavier lyrics: “Citrus” recreates the meeting of
Jesus and Judas at an alcohol-soaked high school party, while “First
Night” repeats the phrase “Words alone never could save us.”

What, in Finn’s opinion, could actually save us is never made
clear. The lack of clear answers is characteristic of the album,
whether the question concerns girls, god, or painkillers.

“Chillout Tent” is the catchiest tune of the bunch, which is
rather ironic considering that it is about drug overdoses. Yet the
high-pitched female vocals, background piano, and the lyrics about
young love—albeit in an illegal-substance-induced,
together-in-the-hospital sort of way—disguise the stranger side of the
love ’em and leave ’em experience.

“Boys and Girls in America” is an upbeat soundtrack for
getting in trouble, about getting in trouble. By turning a poetic eye
on subjects normally seen as low or trivial, The Hold Steady has
created a document of what it’s like to be young and stupid in America.
By setting this poetry to incongruously positive pub-rock, they have
made it essential listening.